16 January 2008

Mister Abby is out of town (in the military sense) so I am here alone. This means, of course, that the household is on a heightened state of alert. All doors are secured, the mines in the yard are armed at all times, and I'm particularly alert to out-of-the-ordinary sounds.

I was perched here in the kitchen after we did the Evening Walks (yes, plural - each dog got their Very Own Walk tonight). Then...what did I hear?

Not so much a "house-settling" type of noise. It was more of "physical contact with interior wall" sort of noise.

After I realized it was pretty unlikely I had critters in the attic, I started inventory of the Bad Dogs. Sparky on the couch... Jack flopped in the entry... Where was Casey???

The sound came again and I realized it wasn't coming from the corner of the attic, but from the shared wall between the gun room and our master bathroom. I stepped quietly into our bedroom and peered through the bathroom.

Now picture a mildly guilty-looking German Shepherd in the middle of that scene.

You must understand, we've been blaming the TP fiascos on Jack for months. And it is annoying. Toilet paper gets expensive, but moreover, it's one of those things you adjust to consuming at a certain rate. And, at least for us, that rate is not supposed to be a 12-pack a week.

So we've taken to trying to remember to shut all the bathroom doors and keep spare rolls locked up more securely than loaded pistols. Blaming it on the puppy.

And it turns out she's been framing him. Now I have to wonder about everything else we've been blaming on him. Perhaps if we set up cameras we'd find out he's not the one getting up on the counter, and not the one who's taken to eating the occasional paperback.

What a Bad Old Dog.

Of course, she got spoken to. Not shouted at, and certainly not thumped. Age has its perks, even in the dog world.

And, as a note, that's the new Charmin Ultra Strong (which I didn't realize was a new product when I bought it - it was next to the bigger package of Charmin Ultra Soft). And it might be stronger than average toilet paper (it's certainly less soft than average). But it is not strong enough to hold up to G. Shep teeth.

EDIT: Okay, all of you who've been clicking on the top picture to see what scandalous magazines are in the Bad Dog Head...it's the Fall 2007 edition of the Garand Collectors Association magazine. Like I'd let a copy of Shaved Goats Quarterly appear in a blog photo...